Jeff Rubin, the CIBC chief economist who famously predicted $200-a-barrel oil, isn’t backing down. He’s left the bank and his new book — Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller — argues that expensive oil will return and force a reversal of globalization. The Globe and Mail has a good piece on Rubin and an excerpt from the book. Well worth reading.
Here’s a taste of Rubin’s thinking from the sidebar: “What we need now is something equivalent to the U.S. Highway Act in 1956, when all of a sudden the U.S. decided to build an immense road infrastructure. … We need to do the equivalent in public transit. … Detroit’s problems are now permanent and structural, they’re not cyclical. There will be no recovery in auto sales.”
Kenneth Kidd of The Toronto Star has two excellent pieces in today’s paper — and I’m quoted in both saying things that will be familiar to those who’ve read DRIVE.
The first, shorter one, is “What car interiors say about us” and I have a little fun with coffee in it: “They’ve really schooled the Americans,” says Falconer, who jokes that the only thing this continent’s auto industry got right all on its own was the cupholder. (”In Europe, a man stands and has an espresso. He doesn’t drink non-fat decaf latte in his SUV.”)
The second — “Why we drive like idiots” — includes this bit: “There’s a societal pressure to make getting a licence easy,” says Falconer. The predictable result: We are, collectively, not the finest of motorists. “People just have bad skills. It’s too easy to get a licence compared with Europe.”
As I point out in DRIVE, improved interiors are related to sprawl because the more time we have to spend in our cars, the more comfort we demand from automakers and the more comfortable our cars, the more we’re willing to accept spending lots of time in them.
But something I didn’t think about until Kidd interviewed me is the role of sprawl in our attitudes toward licencing for drivers. In a car-dominated culture (read: North America) too many people need to drive because they live in sprawl, where public transit is inadequate, where walking is impractical and where even cycling is uninviting. After years of driving their kids everywhere, parents would punish any politicians who made it tougher for 16-year-olds to take the wheel. But, of course, that means teenagers are learning (and, too often, dying) at high speeds on our roads — and developing too many bad habits along the way.
Europeans, on the other hand, live in walkable communities with excellent transit, strong cycling cultures and extensive (and often fast) train systems. Meanwhile, gas is far more expensive and the rate of car ownership is much lower than in the US, where there are more cars than drivers. That means parents can afford to be a bit more patient and let their kids develop the necessary skills before hitting the Autobahn.
So sprawl not only encourages more driving, it fosters more bad driving.
Following in the wake of The New York Times article about Vauban, a German suburb where 70 percent of families live without a car, the paper asks six experts if this is a realistic goal for America. The answer again and again — as I discovered when I was researching DRIVE — comes back to accepting density and building mixed-use walkable communities.
I recommend reading the entire piece, but here are some highlights:
Witold Rybczynski says: “A more realistic goal for most Americans would be a semi-carless community, that is, one that is walkable within the neighborhood for convenience shopping, school-going and errands, and drivable for weekly shopping, consumer purchases and so on.”
D.J. Waldie says: “I can’t drive. And I daily benefit from these planning choices. But few Lakewood residents make as much use of Lakewood’s walkable, bike-able grid as I do. Good design is a requirement for letting go of your wheels, but only a partial requirement.”
Christopher B. Leinberger says: “There are many reasons to encourage this market trend: social cohesion, environmental sustainability, public health, lower public sector costs for infrastructure per square foot. But the bottom line is household economics. American families who are car-dependent spend 25 percent of their household income on their fleet of cars, compared with just 9 percent for transportation for those who live in walkable urban places… Walkable urban development is not for everyone but it is time that American communities offer choice.”
In an era when newspapers are struggling to survive, The Globe and Mail has foolishly given its readers one more reason to cancel their subscriptions: replacing must-read city hall columnist John Barber with unreadable international affairs columnist Marcus Gee.
After thirteen years at the clamshell, Barber deserves new challenges so I can’t really begrudge his decision — and I look forward to reading him in the Review section — but I am shocked and appalled that anyone believes that Canada’s answer to Bill Kristol is a worthy successor.
Barber is the kind of guy who loves vintage Detroit V8s — he dubbed his Grand Marquis the Grand Monkey — but rides his bike to work. Someone who understands urban issues, how city hall works (or, too often, doesn’t) and why it all matters so much, he wrote with insight, passion and plenty of wit. He never allowed himself to be sucked in by the cocktail party nonsense about socialists hordes taking over city hall and delighted in chronicling the clownish antics of the councillors who oppose Mayor David Miller. But he certainly was not shy about gleefully detailing the follies, foibles and flaws of the mayor and his allies either. Barber was, quite simply, the paper’s best columnist.
Not just bad news for the Globe, his departure is also a blow to those of us who care about Toronto, a city with great promise, but daunting challenges. The colleagues Barber leaves behind, he left behind years ago: at the Star, Royson James confuses crankiness with intelligence; at the Sun, Sue-Ann Levy sees reds under every bed; and at the Post… wait, is the Post still publishing?
My guess is the Globe bosses really do believe socialists run the city and they’ve promoted Gee to this crucial column to rant about it (and, if all goes well, influence the outcome of the next mayoral election). So here’s what we can expect: paint-by-numbers punditry, high dudgeon about high taxes and constant whingeing about the so-called war on the car.
That’s not a column I will be reading.
Austin Cline considers how Oregon’s “death with dignity” law has “improved the lives — and deaths — of so many.” He writes: “The actual consequences have been far more in line with what supporters predicted: some people would avail themselves of the drugs while the overall medical industry would shift to a position which does more to alleviate the pain, suffering, and indignity experienced by the terminally ill.”
I had a great time talking about That Good Night at Furby House Books in Port Hope yesterday. It’s an charming and excellent bookstore and the folks who run it — owner Bill Edwards and manager Jenny Munro — are lovely people who appreciate books and authors. If you’re ever in Port Hope, be sure to drop in.
The audience for my talk was really engaged, which is always a thrill for a speaker, and most seemed to share my belief that the issues that I cover in the book — including assisted suicide — are ones we need to talk about. So let’s get the debate started.